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Comment by throwaway2037 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway2037

The final paragraph is brilliant:

    > If the rules seem Draconian at first, bear in mind that they are meant to make it possible to check code where very literally your life may depend on its correctness: code that is used to control the airplane that you fly on, the nuclear power plant a few miles from where you live, or the spacecraft that carries astronauts into orbit. The rules act like the seat-belt in your car: initially they are perhaps a little uncomfortable, but after a while their use becomes second-nature and not using them becomes unimaginable.

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As an electronics guy I have to say that even if you code perfectly, your system can still fuck up, because your assumption is wrong. E.g. I had a project physically tear itself apart, because apparently when the USB-cable was disconnected in just the right moment the servo would interpret the cut off PWM pulse as a position clue, one that just by code alone should be unreachable.

What we learn from that is that even well written code cannot guarantee everything and you need physical fallbacks like end-switches that remove power from the servos if activated (and whoever thought pulse length is a reliable way to set servos is probably wrong).

Especially when writing software for hardware in space, managing "unreachable" code paths is tested and considered, because with cosmic rays and other sorts of radiation, no code path is actually unreachable.

Radiation hardened computing is a whole other (fascinating) can of worms, I can only imagine how hard that can get.

Wouldn’t a digital servo mitigate the problem?

No, they were digital servos. As far as I know the only difference between analog and digital servos is in how they process the received signal, the signals themselves are very much the same.

But if by digital you meant some hypothetical servo that needs to receive its data as bytes with a checksum — yeah that would work, as long as the thing can do a graceful shutdown on powerloss. But I am not aware of such servos (although I wouldn't be surprised if they existed, on that project I was just a programmer).

I realize now my comment was dumb.

Thanks for the correction.

It’s interesting how the seat belt comment sets the time this was written. Seat belts have been required for basically my entire life and I, nor anyone else I know, think twice about them.

But here it’s being used as a familiar pain point the author assumes everyone deals with.

Fun fact, Volvo created and patented the three point safety belt in use today after years of R&D and testing expenses, but immediately made it free for all other car makers.

I wonder if companies would do that today without heavy incentives. I can’t imagine for example a VC backed company doing that.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brentdykes/2025/01/28/the-data-...?

In the same vein, at Volvo's factory outside of Gothenburg they have the obligatory museum. It's just that they don't showcase old, famous models. The museum is entirely built around car safety and how Volvo has worked with it. It is interesting with a company that has been so dedicated to their core values for such a long time.

Aren't Volvos the cars that are (or were) so rigid that collision shocks were transmitted rather too directly to passengers ?

I think that was a problem with many if not most cars before modern energy-dissipating crumple zones were developed. The front was built rigid to prevent the engine block from entering the cockpit and crushing the driver/passenger (which was a big safety problem at some point) but turns out that too much rigidity wasn't a good idea either…

If SV developed seatbelts:

SaaS - seatbelts as a service, available in 3 packages:

- Starter: 4 tightenings* per day, $2.99/mo

- Standard: 6 tightenings* per day, $5.99/mo

- Premium: unlimited** tightenings, $9.99/mo

*Once exceeded, belt will remain slack. Check your local laws. We will not be held liable

**Subject to a fair usage policy. Policy may change at any time. Please check before driving

All plans support a maximum of 2 occupants. Please subscribe to additional plans for more occupants.

    > I wonder if companies would do that today without heavy incentives.

Didn't Tesla give away all of their patents at some point?

Offhand, they made the charging system related patents free to use because a standard charging system is a great thing for any vehicle.

Doesn’t this fall under “commoditise your complement”? It’s good business for Tesla to do so.

Dumb question. How exactly do you make something "patent free"? Do you get the patent (so no one else can troll with it), the promise not to enforce "violations"?

They used to advertise the fact their CEO's wife was a nurse, and she lobbied them to prioritize safety.

Here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPgDgNtOouo

Some more background:

https://www.volvocars.com/en-ca/news/safety/let-your-head-re...

I mean, a modern example might be the various companies open-sourcing LLMs (e.g. Meta). I don't think "public-mindedness" is exactly the right explanation, it's probably driven by strategic thinking... but then, maybe the same was true of Volvo.

Definitely an artifact of its time. I have older family members who still resent seatbelt laws, who still have those "buckle only" defeat devices that stop the chiming. "The government can't tell me what to do" can be such a deeply ingrained attitude!

I have a friend who spent a few years skydiving. He thinks he's a fantastic driver but well let's just say opinions vary. He will happily speed on the freeway and dive between cars like a maniac. What's funny is his pre and post attitude towards seatbelts after skydiving. He's now all about safety equipment and using it every time, probably because a backup chute saved his life. Even so, he's a skeptic about Automatic Activation Devices (AADs) since they came after his time. It's funny how being personally impacted changes your attitude, and then the next safety device comes along and people are back to not trusting it.

It ain't just older people, either. A lot of friends in my age group and younger default to not putting on their seatbelts, and only do so if I explicitly tell them to do so (or if they notice my truck beeping about it).

My state doesn't require rear belts but I still wear mine when sitting in the back and encourage others to do the same. My sibling had a classmate in high school who got thrown out of the rear window while the car was in a roll, crushing and killing him.

It's a little crazy to me that people are perfectly comfortable going 80+ down the freeway with no belts on in the back. Like the two seat backs are enough. It reminds me of the "no smoking sections" in restaurant that were sectioned off by a half wall.

I would refuse to start or continue a journey if any passenger behind our beside me won't wear their seat belt.

Old UK safety video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWLmoeoHrP4

In New Zealand, the driver is responsible for ensuring all passengers are wearing seatbelts, and I believe (someone please correct me) that they can be held libel if any passenger is not wearing one.

I don’t understand what happened in that video.

Are we supposed to believe that the front seat will somehow move forward from the force of the rear passenger hitting it? And this force will be so great that it will crush the front driver’s skull against the steering wheel? Is that really the take-away here?

If so, that’s a PSA about poor engineering and design of the driver seat and less about rear passenger seat belt safety.

I have no particular knowledge of this topic but from this 1998 BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/128684.stm :

    > It is estimated that if all rear seat belts were worn, 120 deaths and
    > 1,000 serious injuries could be prevented each year. Back seat
    > passengers are three times more likely to die in an accident if they
    > are not strapped in, according to the AA.
    >
    > The organisation says each year more than 50 people in the front seats
    > of cars are killed after being hit by back seat passengers who were
    > not wearing seatbelts.

edit This 2018 article from the RAC also says it's real: https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/news/motoring-news/drivers-warne...

Kinetic energy increases with the square of the velocity, so in a head-on collision everything not buckled on the back seat becomes a missile heading towards the passenger seats. Even a bag with a laptop is dangerous and you should put it in the foot compartment. And that's like 3kg while an average person will weigh around 70kg.

Even the folks up front need to be wearing one. That's how my cousin died: got thrown through the windshield in a head-on collision.

I wear my seatbelt 100% of the time and demand all my friends and loved ones do, too. I also resent seatbelt laws because they are abhorrent. Nothing should invoke state violence without a victim.

That said, and more on topic: this isn't so much about laws as it is attitudes; plenty of people even today don't bother to wear seatbelts.

    > It’s interesting how the seat belt comment sets the time this was written.

I was surprised by this comment, as the PDF version that I read was undated.

During my search, I found there is a whole Wiki page dedicated to this paper! Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_10:_Rules_for_Dev...

That Wiki page says 2006.

I'm reminded of a clip that went viral a couple years ago with footage from the 80s containing people describing the recent expansion of DUI laws as "Communist"[1]

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xcQIoh3FQQ

I still find seatbelt laws to be one of the most ridiculous examples of government overreach. People think the government shouldn't be in their bedroom, but for some inexplicable reason have no problem with the government being inside their car.

I am struggling to take this comment seriously. How do you feel about requiring minors (< 18yrs old in most places) to wear a seat belt? Do you also think that crash test safety is an overreach of gov't... or speed limits?

1. Be polite

2. Be efficient

3. Have a plan for every edge case you meet

That almost works as a manifesto for Ada SPARK, just replace polite with formal.

The Nvidia firmware language? I think that one only has two steps:

1. The more you buy the more you save

2. Black leather jacket

Yeah I think I’ll stick to building websites and web apps.

You never know, your website may just be mission critical, like if there’s some code on the ISS running:

  while true; do wget $NetOpWibby_website || sudo shutdown; done

Sure, they have to worry that some imbecile makes mission critical code depend on some dating website.

Someday scientists are going to want to study human reproduction in microgravity in order to test the feasibility of space colonization, and "some dating website" will indeed be something on which mission critical code depends.

Why would colonial powers let subjects control their own reproduction?

Typically when an independant judiciary gets its nose rubbed so deep in evidence they have to rule against it.

Can you give five examples?

I can give at least two:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perez_v._Sharp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia

Indeed .. and they're both US examples.

In my initial comment I was thinking of four main western countries (there are others), each with multiple court cases that hammered home the core human rights violations inherent in anti-miscegenation laws and forced, often deceptive, abortion policies.

Had the GP commenter here simply asked for an example or an expansion I'd have provided that .. but the "five examples" demand was just .. odd.

They've wandered off with no reply so I suspect that might have been the limit of their rhetoric .. such as it was.

You can't find examples of countries ending miscegenation laws and forced abortion eugenic policies after they became publically embarrassing through lawsuits?

Why five?

"Let" ain't exactly the right word for something people are gonna do no matter how hard a colonial government cracks down on it.

People be fuckin'.

Where I stand, it is quite common to have Websites and apps do security assessments with penttesting and code checking, dependencies are validated and may be refused based on security clearance.

Software is critical for many business, even if no-one dies, millions may be lost, and drive the company into insolvency.

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